Dell ‘Investing for the Future’: CEO

Social media, mobile devices and cloud computing are all areas in which computer giant Dell is investing as part of an effort to transform its business, CEO Michael Dell told CNBC on Wednesday.

As consumers migrate away from personal computers toward tablets and smartphones, Dell said that his company is building "a portfolio of solutions" while expanding "aggressively" into areas of growth.

"Clearly Dell is a company investing for its future," said the computer maker's chief, who returned to the helm of his namesake company in 2007 after a brief retirement.

"We made $5 billion of acquisitions this year, really adding a lot of the key technology that addresses the opportunities that we see in the market," Dell told Squawk on the Street, on the sidelines of a conference in Austin, Texas. "I think anyone looking at this company can see this is a company that is investing for its future."

Like competitor Hewlett-Packard, Dell is struggling to shed a perception of irrelevance as the computing world becomes increasingly portable. Tech giant Apple has profited mainly from its line of popular mobile products.

Dell said his company was "aggressively transforming" itself in a way that would lure customers back into the fold.

"Certainly, if you look over the last several years, you've seen the gross margins of the company have really shifted quite dramatically where over 50 percent are now derived from the new areas of Dell," the CEO said.

He added that he was "quite excited" about the PC, especially with the advent of Microsoft's Windows 8.